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Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

nytimes.com

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Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#141

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

bookofjoe wrote: post #122
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We let students major in theater, but not in football. There's a big difference.

In fact, Alabama football team members spend far more time doing football-related things — practices, meetings, games, etc. — than any non-athlete devotes to their major subject.

Don't get me wrong, I was a varsity student athlete too, but none of that counted towards my major. I think it would be a joke if it had counted as academic work. I went to college to learn and play, separately.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#142

Post by moate »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #99
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> probably the most underpaid state employee What about the athletes themselves who are taking years off their lives, while getting absolutely no compensation?

They get room, board, all they can eat, an education (with an incredible amount of tutoring that is not available to the average student) and training that they absolutely could not get anywhere else. There's no market for minor league football in the US and there never will be.

Of course there won't be. Why would you create a minor league football program when you're competing against colleges that have: 1- Long term history with their fans 2- Better proximity to fanbases 3- No labor costs for their players 4- Stadiums and infrastructure already in place.

There is a market for minor league football, and that market is being met by college sports.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#143

Post by hobofan »

grogenaut wrote: post #65

The university I went to is in the top 20 (top 8 when I went)(this is just for context not to start an argument about rankings). The school is also in the top 20 in endowments. When I was there they did an analysis of alumni donations. One thing they found out was that if you did 2 or more activities in high school you were likely to do 1 or more activities in college. (these numbers are ballpark) If did ANY activiti…

Are those millionaire/billionaire alumnis making donations? To me it sounds really strange that "normal" alumni would donate to their university in addition to the already expensive tuition they pay off over decades.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#144

Post by dragonwriter »

yifanl wrote: post #137
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet football players tend to make more money and find jobs around the sport more often than theater students do in and around the theater.

A quick search states about 2% of college football players manage to go pro. I'm not familiar, but I imagine it's a bit of a cliff for the other 98%? There don't seem to be too many transferable skills from college football if you don't make a living from football.

> I'm not familiar, but I imagine it's a bit of a cliff for the other 98%? There don't seem to be too many transferable skills from college football if you don't make a living from football.

I think football players tend very often to take academic programs relating to communication/journalism, education, or PE/exercise science/etc., and there are certainly some transferable skills from college football itself, along with such programs, to sports journalism, coaching/athletic training, and teaching in secondary school PE programs.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#145

Post by cosmie »

partialrecall wrote: post #55
impendia wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we will look back on this period of American universities as a great aberration. I hope so. Athletics are only the tip of the iceberg. Tuition at universities like Harvard, Princeton, etc. runs around $45,000 a year. Even at public universities, it tends to be over $10,000 a year. This is tuition , mind you, not counting room and board. These figures are vastly higher than a generation ago, and are continui…

Tuition rates for Harvard and Princeton in particular are deceptive since if you earnestly cannot afford that tuition, they don't ask you to pay it. Those schools are often actually cheaper than public schools for people without much money. Other expensive private-nonprofit schools may be another matter entirely. But those two are bad examples to use.

> Those schools are often actually cheaper than public schools for people without much money.

While this is true on paper, it's not always the case in practice. I was able to get multiple acceptance offers to Ivy League schools, and poor enough to have the sliding scale of tuition slide all the way to $0. But all of them had an estimated cost of attendance[1] so optimistic about ancillary expenses during the school year that it was infeasible to actually go to any of them. There were other implicit barriers to acceptance as a poor kid as well, but the way the sliding scale was implemented was the biggest.

I chose a state school instead. Despite a higher paper cost higher than the Ivy League schools offering free tuition, the total out of pocket cost for attendance of the state school worked out significantly lower.

[1] Federal loans and many scholarships won't pay out over the university's estimated cost of attendance. By zero'ing out tuition and room and board, that just leaves the "books and personal expenses" line item,

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#146

Post by RandomBacon »

Jach wrote: post #109
klenwell wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current NY Times headline (did it change?) doesn't mention penalties but emphasizes the creepy tracking part: Orwellabama? Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games But for that gross invasion of privacy, I'd say this was a pretty clever solution.

It's not an invasion when you invite it.

Nothing ever optional became mandatory.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#147

Post by linuxftw »

harryh wrote: post #17
linuxftw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is money. Where I'm from, only the rich kids do after school sports. The poor kids have two working parents and they can't afford to miss work to pick them up after school. We're subsidizing the rich kids to play sports with public funds, and that's total BS. Not everyone lives in a city, so they can't just take a public bus home after school and the after-school activity buses were canceled.

You've completely changed your argument. First it was "sports have nothing to do with receiving a basic education." Now you concede that participating in sports can be a big positive, but in some cases a positive only available to the children of richer students. To that I say: 1) Plenty of poor kids do find ways to participate in school sports. Let's not throw that baby out with the bathwater. 2) Where this is not p…

I never said sports were bad. Organized team sports after-school are not part of a basic education. Since after-school sports activities favor the well-off, we should not use public funds for such activities. Those education dollars should be spent to help the education part, not the rich-kid sports part.

If you want to have public sports programs, that's fine. It has nothing to do with school, should be an entirely separate pool of money, and IMO, should be entirely self-funded.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#148

Post by _match »

watwut wrote: post #132
_match wrote: post #71

The prejudice and ignorance in these comments are astounding, so I'll try address the major themes. I'm defensive because, though I rarely watch the games, I enjoy listening to postgame interviews with the Alabama coach, Nick Saban. He's found unprecedented success in a brutally competitive field by following a textbook stoic philosophy people in the south call "The Process", by encouraging relentless pursuit of perf…

Sounds like your response to "students are not enjoying it" is just explaining why they are not enjoying it. They want to be elsewhere and do something else. It is not disrespectful to not attend sport event you are not interested in, no matter how hard players trained.

You're right, I didn't make that point well.

This Alabama coach is famous for erupting in anger during the last play of the game if his player makes a mistake, even when they are winning 60-0.

To him, every moment matters equally, whether in practice or in the championship. And he considers support of the students and fans to be key in the performance of the players.

The students there LOVE being apart of a winning program. They enjoy the first half when Alabama walks over almost every team in the country.

Saban, i think, feels that the students are threatening the part they enjoy by not staying to the end.

I agree with you that he's probably wrong about that, but I also kind of respect the attitude. And so do most of the fans as you'll see them now happily sitting in the rain until the last second to show their solidarity.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#149

Post by pavon »

mikeash wrote: post #126
falcrist wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a bit orwellian to manipulate students into installing a tracking app like that. Couldn't they just have the students who want to opt in swipe or tap their student IDs as they enter and again as they leave?

What would you do if someone wants to leave without swiping? Hold them there against their will? That would be eight million times more Orwellian than asking them to voluntarily install an app in exchange for some points.

You are free to come an go any time you want, swiping or not, but only people who swipe in before the game starts, and swipe out after the game ends would get entered to win playoff tickets.

It would be easier to game (you could leave for part of the game and return), but is less invasive than the app approach.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#150

Post by Nasrudith »

partialrecall wrote: post #3

It's not at all clear to me why we allow American football and universities to have such a perverse relationship, when it's plain to see that football itself has nothing to do with education, except insofar as it's an activity that many students enjoy (but there is no shortage of other non-academic activities that many students share, such as baseball...) And in cases like this, where students are leaving the game ea…

It is of course perfectly possible to be a fan of football, sane, and show a proper sense of proportion.

Really in some cases football isn't big fron being a cash cow or "lotto ticket" for a society that views it as an acceptable way to make it big but frankly a cult. It doesn't matter to them if it is a poor investment or if there are horrifying human costs. It is an end to itself and all who question it are the enemy. Penn State and their Sandusky handling is a particularly infamous example of the mentality.

The local fervor is what leads to its undue emphasis where voters balk at funding for textbooks or class sizes but approve oversized stadiums without a thought. Undue emphasis is a symptom of anti-intellectualism in that they don't value education or view it as actively "betraying" their culture in a tall poppy way. Football is a way to get rich without "betrayal" of their self-perpetuated station.

That aside I suspect the institutions adapt to this by knowing that a football team raises their public profile more than academics. Which could be considered a "tradition" - a legacy of population and education. Since during industrial eras the vast body to market to were farm and factory families who never went to college - regardless of intelligence they would have little reason outside of personal interest to follow the academic details. This isn't a sleight on them - most don't follow areas of expertise outside their profession except for personal interest. Even if outdated for the purpose the institutions are still in place.

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